Vase with a wide foot and swelling globular form rising to a thick tapering neck interrupted by seven saucer-like flanges below a flaring rim. Of hand sculpted porcelain glazed in red copper oxide over white with blue and green copper oxide pooling on one side of the neck. Signed on the reverse with an incised signature within an incised double ring: Makuzu (Makuzu Kozan II, died 1940). Showa Era, circa 1930 – 1940.

With the tomobako or original box, inscribed on the exterior of the lid: Kabin or Vase; and on the reverse of the lid: Yohen Yokoyu or Flambé Glazed (Vase), and signed: Makuzu Kozan Saku or Made by Makuzu Kozan, and sealed: Makuzu.

The box inscription is by the same hand as a lid inscribed by Kozan III (Kozan Kuzunosuke, 1881 – 1945, illustrated in Bridging East and West: Japanese Ceramics from the Kozan Studio, page 36, number 10. This can suggest several alternative dates for this piece: one that the piece was made after Kozan III succeeded as master of the studio, from 1940 to 1945; two that the piece was made in the preceding decade and the box was inscribed by the third generation, either before or after his father’s death in 1940. Many Makuzu pieces made under the direction of the first generation have boxes inscribed by the second generation while clearly indicating the first generation and his Teishitsugigei-in seal. Another reason suggesting a date from the 1930’s is that Kozan II exhibited two flambé vases at the Teiten, one in Showa 2 or 1927, and another in Showa 5 or 1930 (c.f. the Nittenshi, volume 8, page 263, number 92; and volume 9, page 513, number 173, respectively). In fact, Kathleen Emerson-Dell suggests explicitly in Bridging East and West (page 15) that “boxes signed by Kozan III may have been objects left over from his father’s tenure.” She further points out that the government often requisitioned potters to make things such as “ceramic insulators for the war effort.” It seems that few pieces would have been sold during the War Period itself, and any remaining stock was destroyed during the 1945 bombing of the factory in Yokohama.

Superbly potted and glazed, this piece represents the rare modernist work of the Makuzu workshop.